


Forget-Me-Not

by Burrahobbit



Series: Hankvin Week 2018 [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crying, Five Stages of Grief, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It gets messy folks, M/M, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 01:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burrahobbit/pseuds/Burrahobbit
Summary: Day 5: Soulmate AUHe’s been so fucking angry. At the universe, at his soulmate, and at himself.This is so fucked up.





	Forget-Me-Not

**Author's Note:**

> This is...... a lot longer than I was expecting
> 
> Enjoy!!!

_Hanahaki disease comes in five stages, each having a different flower. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the flowers that grow in each stage, but there have been many theories concerning this mystery. The only thing that is for sure is that during the last stage, the two soulmates will have the same type of flower growing._

_Much is still unknown about Hanahaki. Though many people throughout time have attempted to learn about the stages of the disease and ways to cure it, the only known way to cure it is to kiss your soulmate._

Gavin clicks off the article, staring at the now blank home page of his browser.

He’d contracted the disease three days ago. The doctors had told him that there was nothing they could do.

The internet wasn’t being much help either. The best he got were vague articles and scammy-sounding medicines to hide the symptoms. But nobody could help him.

Gavin’s fists clench. 

He’s been so fucking angry. At the universe, at his soulmate, and at himself. 

This is so fucked up.

He coughs again, feeling the flowers in his lungs force their way out of his mouth. The little flowers are a dark red, looking almost like blood across his sleeve.

He’d rather it be blood. He’d rather it be anything other than this stupid fucking disease.

He’d told Tina right after his hospital visit. She’d gone very quiet for a moment.

“That’s fucked up, Gav.”

He’d laughed, a sad choked-up sound.

“Tell me about it.”

“And the doctors can’t do anything?”

“No. Either I find my soulmate, or...”

“Or nothing,” Tina says. “We’ll find whoever it is.”

Gavin hadn’t argued. Hadn’t said that he already feels like giving up.

He’d been transferred to a new precinct the day that he’d contracted Hanahaki. It could have been anyone - someone on the bus he’d ridden, anyone in the cafe he’d gotten coffee from, and any of the people at his new precinct.

Gavin wipes the blood-red flowers from his sleeve, standing to get a cough drop. All the suggested ‘fixes’ only worked minimally, temporarily.

He stops in front of the mirror in his bathroom, staring at the circles under his eyes and the sick pallor he’s gotten.

He looks like the fucking walking dead.

His hands clutch the countertop, knuckles turning white.

God, he needs a drink.

Abandoning his cough drop mission, he grabs his jacket, his feet automatically taking him to the closest bar. He’s itching to get black-out drunk.

The alcohol burns his abused throat, but he keeps drinking anyways. He coughs up red flowers into his hand, the fragile little things taunting him.

He rips off the petals one by one, scattering them to the floor below.

When he goes to ask for another drink, the bartender is giving him a pitying look. The raging fire inside him burns hotter.

“The fuck are you lookin’ at?”

The bartender let’s out a sigh.

“I’m cutttin’ you off. Not gonna let you drink yourself to death tonight.”

Gavin seethes, downing the last of his drink.

“Dyin’ anyways.”

True to his word, the bartender doesn’t give him another drink.

Gavin leaves, sluggishly making his way back to his apartment. Fuck that guy.

His computer is still open from earlier. 

In a moment of drunken stupidness, he finds one of those flower meaning websites and matches the flower to one on the website.

Horseshoe Geraniums. They mean stupidity. 

Jesus Christ, is his life just a fucking joke?

He shuts down his computer and deletes his web history. Fuck everything.

 

Gavin brings a fuck ton of tissues to work, and makes sure to carefully cough into those and dispose of them as quickly as possible.

He doesn’t want people to know - doesn’t want those pitiful looks from everyone as he dies. He already gets enough shit from Tina.

He thought he’d be excited about transferring to Tina’s precinct, about finally hanging out at work with his best friend.

Now it’s mostly listening to her outrageous plans to find his soulmate, and those sad far-away eyes she gets.

Gavin fucking hates it. He doesn’t know why he’s so fucking angry, but he is.

He snaps at Tina one day, tells her to fuck off with her ‘helping’ shit. She gets these big, sad eyes, like he actually hurt her. And his anger fizzles away, like it never existed.

“I-I’m sorry, I don’t, I don’t know-“

“It’s- it’s okay, Gav. I know this is hard for you.”

It’s like he’s seeing Tina clearly again for the first time since he’d gotten this fucking disease.

Sure, he’s hurt by this. Of course he is.

But so is Tina.

“How about I get some ice cream and watch a shitty romcom at my house?” Gavin offers.

Tina smiles. “Alright. But you’d better get cookie dough.”

They spend the night spread out on Gavin’s couch, making fun of the shitty romance and how stupid everyone in the movie is.

When he coughs up petals into his ice cream, and Tina looks sad, he doesn’t get angry.

After all, it’s Tina who’s losing a best friend.

 

There’s no specific time frame for how the disease progresses.

The only way that Gavin knows when he’s entered stage two is that the Geraniums he’s been coughing up have been replaced with big-ass orange Lilies. They’re even more obtuse, and Gavin has trouble sometimes with coughing them out of his lungs.

There’s a surgery that’ll get rid of them for a few weeks, before they grow back. If Gavin had that kind of money, he might consider getting the surgery, if only so he can fucking work.

Half the time he’s in the bathroom coughing his lungs out. Orange Lilies sit in the sink, damp with his spit and bent from the force of him coughing them up.

He closes his eyes for a long moment. 

He’d do fucking anything to have this not be his life right now.

But life goes on. The flowers are scooped up in a napkin and thrown in the trash can, and he goes back to work.

There’s no way to distract himself from this - not work, not sleep, not even joking with Tina.

Sometimes, he thinks he can even feel the plants sitting heavily in his lungs, growing and sucking out his very life.

Gavin’s hands shake as he tries to work. He feels like his life is falling apart- like _he’s_ falling apart.

The hand on his shoulder startles him.

After a moment, he recognizes the man standing beside him - Lieutenant Hank Anderson. He’d met the man briefly a few times, but they’d never held a real conversation.

Anyone who wanted to be a detective knew about him, and Gavin certainly looked up to him for a long time.

But that was before the accident, before he’d gone from ‘youngest Lieutenant’ to ‘washed up homicide detective.’

Gavin looks up in confusion.

“You’re the new kid, right? Detective Gavin... Reed, was it?”

“...Yeah?”

“You just, ah, look like you ain’t feelin’ too well.”

Gavin feels that anger flare up again.

“I’m fucking fine.”

The Lieutenant’s gaze softens slightly, as if he fucking _understands,_ and Gavin grinds his teeth.

“Are you sure-“

“I don’t need your goddamn pity. I’ll be fucking fine.”

Anderson retreats, having the audacity to look hurt.

Gavin can’t help but feel a little guilty, but he says nothing as Anderson walks back to his desk.

 

Stage three brings with it tiny orange flowers. Tina tells him that they’re Butterfly Weeds, and Gavin laughs hoarsely. He’s been half-losing his voice.

“Of course they’re weeds.”

“420 blaze it, my man.”

They sit in silence for a long time, sipping the beers that Tina got out of her fridge.

Everything suddenly comes crashing down on him.

He’s dying. _God, he’s fucking_ dying.

And even worse, he realizes that he doesn’t _want_ to die.

Tears slip out, unbidden, and Gavin clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sobs he can feel coming on.

One of Tina’s hands rubs his back slowly, saying some comforting babble that Gavin doesn’t have the mind to pay attention to.

He’s not sure how long they sit there, Gavin crying his eyes out as Tina sits with him.

“I-I don’t want to die,” Gavin whimpers out.

“I know, Gavvy.” She kisses the top of his head. “Then let’s go find that soulmate, huh?”

 

At this point, Gavin is willing to try whatever stupid things Tina has in mind. Including the absolutely terrible stuff.

“Ads? Really?”

“Just posters, Gavin. We can put them around your bus stop, and the cafe, and maybe put something up for the station-“

“No way in hell, Tina. I’m not going to get embarrassed in front of the whole precinct.”

“Gavin. Come on. You said those were the places you went, so those are the options.”

He taps his fingers against the table. He can feel another cough coming on soon, tickling the back of his throat.

“Not now. As a last resort, if we don’t find them anywhere else.”

Tina grumbles, but she relents.

“Worst case scenario,” Tina says, “At least the last stage might help. You’ll have matching flowers then, right?”

Gavin nods, feeling a numb kind of sadness. He coughs into his hand, the Butterfly Weed scattering and falling on the table.

He squishes the little flowers one by one into the wood. It never helps.

Nothing ever helps.

Tina’s talking about the poster, about how it’ll have a number at the bottom for people to tear off, like he’s a fucking missing person.

Accurate, he supposes, in some kind of poetic way. He feels lost.

They print out a test run, and Tina smiles at the result, showing it off to Gavin. He forces a smile, but he doesn’t really feel anything anymore. Just that numb sadness.

“This all fucking sucks, huh?” Gavin says, picking at his cuticles absently.

Tina pauses, staring at him for a long time.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Gavin.”

He stops picking at his nails to look up at her, at the too-serious expression she has.

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“...I promise. Happy now?”

Tina nods to herself, the serious expression slipping away to something more saddened and worried.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She prints more copies of the poster. Gavin picks at his nails and tries not to think about anything.

 

There’s a sickness that sweeps through the precinct. Nothing serious - just a cough and runny nose. Though, from how miserable Lieutenant Anderson is, coughing at his desk, you’d think it was the fucking plague.

Gavin uses the opportunity to get a day off, claiming to have the same sickness. He probably looks absolutely terrible, so Fowler lets him have it.

Tina gets him soup and cough drops, like he’s actually sick.

“They’ll help,” she says, putting them on his coffee table.

 _‘It never helps,’_ he almost says, but he doesn’t want to make the mistake of hurting Tina again.

He’s starting to wish he didn’t have any friends at all. At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about hurting anyone.

He knows that Tina isn’t leaving, no matter what he does. And that almost makes things worse.

When he gets back to work, most people have gotten over the worst of their sickness.

Anderson, however, is still coughing away at his desk, and Gavin wonders if he caught something worse than the rest of the precinct. Or maybe he’s more susceptible to colds.

Gavin really shouldn’t care. He’s got his own problems to deal with.

Despite this, he brings an extra black coffee the next day, putting it down on The Lieutenant’s desk. As an afterthought, he adds a little note that says ‘feel better soon.’

He knows the man doesn’t usually make it in before noon, and that’s if they’re lucky.

Not like Gavin cares. Either he drinks the coffee or not.

To the surprise of himself and everyone else, Hank comes in only 20 minutes after Gavin. He looks like shit, but he came anyways.

Gavin doesn’t know what the fuck is going on with him. Maybe he decided to get his act together. Probably not, though.

Hank finds the coffee on his desk and picks it up. He inspects it, finding the note easily.

After a moment, he looks around the precinct. Gavin turns away quickly, pretending to look busy on his terminal.

When he glances over to check again, Hank is sitting at his desk, drinking the coffee in his hand.

Gavin turns back to his terminal.

When did he go from thinking of him as ‘Anderson,’ to thinking of him as ‘Hank?’

He gets a sudden tingling in his throat, and he coughs harshly into a tissue. He throws it away in the wastebasket under his desk.

Whatever. He has more important things to think about.

 

Tina’s been coming over a lot more now. They’ve hung up the posters, and Tina is sure that they’re going to make progress with this. She makes sure that Gavin has his phone out in case anyone calls.

“I’ve been thinking about, like, those bucket lists people have?” Gavin says. “I never really had one, but now...”

“Don’t.”

Tina’s voice is sharp. Her hands are fisted into the couch cushions, but Gavin can’t see her face from this angle.

“Don’t, Gavin. Just-“ She gasps quietly, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand.

Belatedly, Gavin realizes that she’s crying.

Gavin feels a tug at his heart, and he puts one hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

Tina shakes her head. She scrubs at her eyes, but the tears keep falling. Gavin can feel himself tearing up as well, and Tina’s hand finds his.

“Whenever we find whoever your soulmate is, I’m going to punch them.”

Gavin chuckles, his free hand wiping away his tears.

“I’ll be honest, I might too.”

Tina laughs with him, her hand tightening in his.

Gavin coughs hard, not even having time to cover his mouth and catch what comes out.

Little yellow flowers, seeming almost like daisies, flutter to the ground. They land between Gavin’s feet.

Gavin cries harder. He feels like he can’t stop anymore, like the tears just keep coming.

He isn’t sure when he falls asleep, but he wakes up with his head on Tina’s shoulder and salty residue covering his face.

Nobody has called.

 

Hank walks up to his desk in the morning. He looks to be a strange combination of awful and put-together. 

Gavin thinks he must still be sick, but he seems to have put some effort into his appearance. His hair is pulled back and tied, and his outfit seems to have some semblance of coordination. Plus, he doesn’t absolutely reek of alcohol. 

He doesn’t look half bad. 

Maybe he _is_ getting his shit together.

“Are you the one who put coffee on my desk?”

Gavin isn’t entirely sure how to respond. He supposes that his surprised silence is answer enough.

“Why did you do it?”

With a shrug, Gavin attempts to smooth his face back into indifference.

“You were the only one still sick, and you looked like shit. I figured you could use some caffeine that doesn’t taste like plastic.”

Their break room coffee maker is notoriously bad. The only ones who drink that shit are people who desperately need it.

It seems that Hank Anderson is full of surprises, because he actually smiles.

“Well, I appreciate it, Reed. It helped.”

Gavin feels something strange in his chest that for once isn’t flowers crawling out of his throat.

“It’s whatever.”

“Well, I was gonna offer to take you out for coffee. But if it’s ‘whatever’...”

The promise of free coffee is enticing. After a moment of thought, Gavin decides on a response.

“I’ll take you up on that. As long as we go somewhere _good.”_

“Fair enough. How about wherever _you_ got that coffee?”

“Deal. Actually-“

He gets out a scrap of paper and writes down his number before handing it over.

“We can talk about the time and day over text. I’m sure we’ve both got shit to do.”

Hank nods, taking the slip of paper.

“See ya, Gavin.”

Hank sits back down at his desk and returns to work. Gavin stares at his own computer screen.

It was odd. For a moment, he’d almost forgotten he was dying.

 

They decide on a day that both of them has off. Gavin is coughing intermittently while texting, and he considers calling the whole thing off.

He asks Tina what she thinks, since she’s the only sensible person he knows anyways.

She tells him to go have fun, that moping around his house isn’t going to help them find his soulmate any faster.

So he goes.

He knows the way there by heart, having been there every morning for the past few weeks. He wonders, for a moment, if anybody there would notice if he stopped coming.

He pushes the thought away and focuses back on the walk, trying to take in the scenery and the people. He gets to the coffee shop in 10 minutes.

He’s a little early, so he sits in a booth near the entrance, waiting for the other man to arrive.

Gavin coughs hard, his throat feeling absolutely awful as more flowers push out of his mouth.

He spits them out into one of the napkins on the table. They’re tiny, and blue. 

 _Forget-me-nots,_ Gavin thinks, and feels numb.

He notices Hank walking toward him, and he quickly shoves the napkin into his pocket.

“Hey. Gotten anything to order yet?” Hank asks.

“Ah, not yet. Didn’t want to be fuckin’ rude or anything.”

Hank seems amused, and he holds out his hand to help Gavin out of his seat.

With only slight hesitation, Gavin takes the hand, pulling himself up and out of the seat. They linger for a half-second, before Gavin pulls his hand away and walks towards the counter.

He pauses to let Hank inspect the board. It doesn’t take long for Hank to decide, and then they both order. Hank pays for it, as promised.

They wait for their coffee beside the counter, Hank striking up light conversation. Gavin pushes down the tingling feeling in his throat of a cough, suppressing it as much as possible.

When they get their drinks, Gavin quickly starts trying to drink his to help soothe his throat. He burns his tongue on the hot liquid, making a displeased face.

“You always this eager?” Hank teases.

“Only when it comes to coffee.”

They sit back down, Gavin taking a bit more time to let it cool now that he’s learned his lesson.

Hank’s actually a pretty interesting person. He’d initially brushed the man off, after hearing stories of what happened. He feels a bit guilty about it now.

Were the circumstances different, he’d probably ask Hank on an honest-to-god date.

His attention is pulled up from his coffee when he hears a loud cough.

He’d almost forgotten Hank was sick-

A little bundle of blue flowers escapes his hand.

_Forget-me-nots._

They both freeze.

Gavin doesn’t even know how to process this. He feels like his whole world has stalled, that the only thing that exists in his view are these little flowers.

“Gavin-“

He’s already standing, his drink forgotten. 

“Gavin, wait-“

He doesn’t even know what he’s doing, just starts walking out of the cafe.

He can’t do this right now. _He can’t fucking do this._

Hank follows him out, catching Gavin’s arm as he walks down the sidewalk.

“Fucking- _hold up.”_

“Stop,” Gavin breaths out, quiet and shaky.

“Just listen-“

“Stop, _please.”_

Gavin is trembling, his eyes stuck to the sidewalk. He can feel tears rolling down his face.

He’d just gotten used to the idea of dying.

He isn’t sure he knows how to go back to living again.

Gavin sobs, and Hank takes him in his arms, hugging him tightly.

“It’s you.” Gavin mumbles. “Oh my god.”

He coughs again, spitting flowers right onto Hank’s jacket.

Hank pauses, looking down at Gavin for a long moment. He cups Gavin’s cheek, wiping tears away with his thumb.

“I’d like to kiss you now.”

Gavin laughs deliriously, pulling Hank down into a kiss.

It’s messy, and salty with tears, but it’s perfect.

They both pull away, Gavin blinking away his remaining tears.

“God, I hope that’s the last time I cry this month.”

Hank shakes his head, smiling ear-to-ear.

“Couldn’t agree more.”

Gavin kisses him again, and feels alive for the first time in a long time.


End file.
